Chris
Chena Takes Charge: How the Whiz Kid from Paraguay Is Building A
Spanish Domain Empire

By Ron
Jackson
Editor/Publisher

Regular readers of
DNJournal's weekly domain sales reports often see
Chris Chena’s name among those buying and selling the marquee names on our Top Ten chart.
In a single
week last month, Chena personally dominated our Big Board as the buyer of 8 of the 10 most valuable domains
listed. No one individual had ever done that before (and we’ll be surprised if anyone ever does it again). The South American domain investor/developer spent over
half a million dollars that week. Very few 27-year-olds have access to that kind of money and until recently, neither did Chena.

Chris was born in
Asunción, the capital of Paraguay in late 1977. Chena told us “I grew up in the heart of South America in a country were summer lasts all year long and it is a place I really enjoy.
The image the rest of the world has of my country is one of poverty and insecurity, but it is a nation of very hard-working and friendly people - in fact I think that the friendliness and warmth of the Paraguayan people has no match.”

“I come from a very humble
family, though we never lacked anything,” Chena said. “Thanks to
the constant work of my father Alfredo Chena and the care of
my mother Nérida Núñez, we progressed towards a
middle-class lifestyle and we all strived to further our education.
Even now, my father is a dedicated student. He started working as a
banker when he was very young and is now also a business manager,
accountant and lawyer who is very respected among his peers. My
mother represents the dedicated and hard-working Paraguayan woman
and from her I inherited an untiring devotion to my work as well as
my stubbornness! I will repeat something over and over until
it works out, never turning back. It’s my family’s legacy.”

When
Chena was three years old his family moved to a small neighborhood
in the outskirts of the capital. He recalls a very happy childhood
even though he didn’t quite fit in with the other kids. “I was
more interested in mental activities than physical,” Chena said.
“Everyone else loved football (soccer to Americans), fights and
physical games. I was the introverted kid - shy, curious and with an
inclination towards science and literature. Initially that was a
problem for me in relating to other kids my age. They considered me
a “fool” for not being part of the group and a fan of the
things they followed. The only times I really felt like socializing
with the group was when they showed off their computers or their
latest videogame consoles - something I couldn’t afford at the
time. In Paraguay, especially back then, it was a luxury to have
those kinds of things and I loved playing with them when they would
let me!

In
many parts of the world, the most memorable day many kids have is
when they get their first bike. For Chena, the special day was when
he got his firstcomputer! “My best moment came when
my father, after saving a lot of money from a long assignment in Uruguay,
bought me my first PC, which ran on an Intel 286. I was 13
and it was my dream come true. I was fascinated with what a great
tool the computer was and I immediately began researching everything
related to computers; design, animation, programming and of course I
filled my computer with games and viruses in record time - I dare
anyone to beat me at it!” Chena smiled.

Of
course, computers really come to life when they are connected
to the Internet. Chena said “Paraguay was one of the last
countries in South America to have access to the Internet, so at
first I had to quench my thirst for “sharing information” by
using local networks - bulletin board systems, local chat rooms and
things like that. Finally in 1998 I got Internet access and it
almost broke my family’s budget because I spent so many hours
doing online research with a dial-up connection!”

A
year after getting on the web, Chena decided he wanted to study
something he found especially fascinating – 3D animation.
In 1999, he started taking classes on the subject at a local
technical school. Chena recalled, “after I finished the course I
presented an amateurish little short film that ran 3-4 minutes. My
teacher really liked it and pushed me to enter it in a national
video competition. I was skeptical but I did it and was surprised to
be invited to an awards ceremony in a luxurious hotel where the
various films were presented. The event was broadcast on a national
TV network and to my surprise, I won first place in my
category!

All
of the sudden, various companies, advertising agencies and
media networks started calling on Chena to do special
projects for them. At age 21 he founded his first company
and ran it from a small room in the back of his house.
“I specialized in creating animation and multimedia
products,” Chena said. We did several jobs including
presentations and interactive CDs for many important
companies in Paraguay and even for the government.”
Chena’s company was a true one-stop shop, providing
programming, design, animation and music scoring, merging
everything seamlessly together in the final product.

In
2000 the company launched what became the first multimedia magazine
in Paraguay. “With that bi-monthly publication we reached all of
the computer users in the country and drew the attention of major
companies that didn’t know this kind of material could be produced
inside our national territory,” Chena said. His client base
exploded, prompting him to move briefly into professional office
space. However he soon moved the office back home because after
months of working practically around the clock he decided he had to
have his bed nearby.

To
avoid burnout, Chena realized he would have to rework his business
model and find a way to serve large markets with less effort. Welcome
to the domain world! During his late night research on new areas
of e-business, he read about some high ticket domain sales and why
domains were valuable electronic assets. At first he was skeptical,
thinking it was just another get rich quick scheme. Still he was
intrigued, so he decided he would stick a toe in the water. In case
the sales reports were smoke and mirrors (which some from those days
did in fact turn out to be) he decided he would instead build real
businesses on a domain or two and sell intangible goods that
wouldn’t require maintaining an inventory, shipping and a large
staff.

Chena
told us, “my first commercial site was ProDominios.com,
a domain reseller site for eNom which I used to fill anempty market spacein my country – a place to register .com domains at a low
price. In Paraguay, any domain registration or hosting company would
charge you up to $50 for a .com. You can imagine how mad they
were when ProDominios appeared offering Paraguay a chance to
register their domains for less than $8! When I first opened
some ISPs even blocked my page, but after talking with them I got
them to stop doing that!”

“The
business was a complete success. Within a couple of months
it was taking over the market and I decided to add a hosting
service at a very low price too,” Chena said. As he became
more comfortable with Internet business he finally started
dabbling in buying and selling domains. “I listed some on Afternic
and Sedo and began exchanging information with other
users on the domain forums. I lost a lot of money at first,
but before long I was selling many domains at a pretty good
price for an amateur!” Still Chena felt domains
could be even more productive if he stopped selling them and
concentrated on buying and developing them.

“Thank
God I was able to connect with the right people and for some
reason they were patient and kind when I contacted them for
help or information - people like Rob Takovich, Thunayan
K. AL-Ghanim (Elequa), Igal Lichtman and Cameron
Johnson.

I have sacrificed the free hours of my youth for this business I
love and I don’t have much of a social life, but on the other hand
I know and get to work with wonderful people and learn from them, as
they learn from me. It’s a never-ending cycle and I do not see it
as a job,”
Chena said.

Chena’s development projects, many of them based on blue chip
Spanish keywords, have flourished. “From the day I decided to
start acquiring domain names my goal has been to acquire only those
names that represent an entire category that is popular on the
Internet or at least a broad part of its spectrum. That is why I
bought Juegos.com (games in Spanish) and not Ajedrez.com
(chess) for example. The same goes for other acquisitions like Viajes.com
(travel) and Computadoras.com (computers). The plan is to
create an entertainment and information network with useful services
for Spanish-speaking users and it echoes back to most things I do: filling up empty spacesto improve those that haven’t been properly attended to.”

Chena
already has the makings of an empire in place. “We’re
entertaining over 7 million visitors each month, and having
tens of millions of ads shown each month. The traffic is growing and
we intend to double it in one year,” he said. “It is the results
from these online businesses that provide the money for my
company’s big domain acquisitions. Though I have to admit, not all
that I earn on my businesses is re-invested on the Internet. I also
use many of my “e-earnings” in other offline conventional
businesses, as well as personal projects for education and more
philanthropic deeds. But without doubt, the main source of my income
is (and will probably always be) the Internet.”

There
is no reason to doubt that, especially with the astronomical growth
in Hispanic use of the Internet. “It is stunning,” Chena said.
“According to an AOL study, Hispanic people spend 43% more
time online when at work and 13% more time online when at home than
the rest of the online population. Comscore Networks, a firm
that measures Internet traffic, indicated that you can add a minimum
of 20% growth every year to the over 15 million
Spanish-speaking users online. This number seems a little too low
for me, since many friends in Mexico and countries around
Paraguay keep telling me about how fast Internet connections in
their countries are growing. 37% of the Hispanic users in that study
indicated that they would increase their ecommerce activities.
I’ve seen it myself, as my number of transactions from
Spanish-speaking users has doubled on several of the sites that draw
ecommerce related traffic.”

Though
Chena originally gravitated toward domains with the idea of
lightening his workload, he is still at it 7 days a week. “Many
colleagues ask me why I don’t just park the Spanish domains and
earn PPC (pay per click) income, or take one of the large
offers I have received from major companies and advertising networks
(I’ve declined offers for millions of Euros on sites like Juegos.com
and Viajes.com). I believe that when you have high traffic
related to a Spanish language market with relatively limited online
options, the ideal thing is to develop those niches and centralize
them in a portal that represents what users look for in each generic
domain name. Then you enrich the site with additional services that
improve their online experience. To show you what happens when you
do this, Juegos.com got about 15,000 unique visitors a day
when I acquired it, now with the site fully developed it welcomes 65,000-100,000
unique visitors a day, also feeding a database of double opt-in
subscribers for our email marketing service; loyal subscribers who
respond to the offers and services that we present to the Spanish
market,” Chena said.

Obviously,
in the long standing debate over whether it makes more sense to
monetize your domains through a PPC parking program or development,
Chena has chosen development. But he agrees that one size does not
fit all. “I believe that it is impossible to tell which one will
work better for all cases. It depends on many factors, especially
the resources each domainer has to work with. In my case, based on
my experience, developing is the best option, and that’s what I am
dedicated to doing with my team at Chena
Ventures,” Chena said.

Chena
with some of his team members at Chena Ventures, Inc.

“PPC
is always the easy way in, there’s no doubt about it - costs are
reduced, support is reduced, income is “stable” month to month.
But then again the best way to improve those profits is by
developing," Chena said. “Lets assume that I decided to only
make money through PPC. I wouldn’t be happy with just parking the
names. I would at least develop some minimum content on the sites.
This will help segment the information depending on the ads that pay
more per click and will also increase the traffic. Based on sales,
subscriptions, or earnings per click, I think a little developing
almost always helps maximize monetization,” Chena said.

“Maybe
this question can be answered with another example from my personal
experience. Two years ago I bought a “typo” that had 450
visitors a day. I had no idea of what to do with the traffic so I
parked the domain, first with a PPC company then on a site with a
little content and Google Adsense. I was making $90 a day on
the best of days, not bad for a typo that only cost me $650 to buy.
Two months later I decided to try something new and integrated an
ebook that was related to what most users where looking for on the
site and I charged a small fee to access the content. Suddenly my
earnings jumped to $400 a day. If I had left the domain parked
in this case I would’ve had a good profit since I only paid $650
for the domain, but if I hadn’t dug deeper and invested in
development, I would’ve never seen the $12,000 per month
that the domain eventually reached.”

Chena
added “I’m not saying this will work in every case. You always
have to study your visitors and what they look for, and there is
obviously some work and money to invest into developing each domain.
In any case, even if development does not produce a major increase
in revenue immediately, it at least ensures that traffic will grow
with time much more than if you had left the domain undeveloped.”

One
domain Chena can’t wait to fully develop is Paraguay.com
which he acquired for $150,000 during that buying spree last
month. “Paraguay.com will be focused on bringing investments to
our country and for certain types of selective tourism. Every day I
receive messages at Paraguay.com from people that want to buy
properties in the green and exotic areas of our country, as well as
travelers asking for the best hotels, popular places to visit, etc.
Even though I paid a lot for the domain, that is much less important
that the responsibility I now have to handle the image of my own
country on the Internet. Just a few days after acquiring the domain,
I received a call from a government agency wanting to invest in the
project. It filled me with pride, and obviously showed us that the
right decision was made,” Chena said.

One
of the most interesting things we can tell you about Chena is that he currently
owns very few domains. He has been such an active buyer that many
people assume he holds a huge portfolio but that is not the case.
“I’ve sold most of them, and literally got rid of all the typos
and alternative extensions at prices that are now considered very
low," Chena said. "I now stress quality over quantity and
have just over 70 domains, compared to the 400 that I used to
have.”

Of
course the 70+ domains he holds are nearly all crown jewels.
His personal favorites are the newly acquired Paraguay.com and
Juegos.com which are both under development. Chena added, “close
behind are Viajes.com, the leader in the market for Hispanic travel
(which will be officially launched next month) and Animation.com,
which represents my affinity for animated digital art. I also have
the Spanish version of the latter, Animacion.com,
which is developed and is a place filled with animations from
Spanish-speaking authors.”

Chena’s
name has become synonymous with the Spanish market – but he is not
the only one mining that lucrative space. “There is competition in
this business as in any other, but luckily for me, the main Spanish
domain investor/developers are friends of mine. Hopefully they’ll
end up selling me their domains!,” Chena laughed.

“Seriously
though, I’ve noticed that there is more competition and
the prices are going up on the Hispanic domain market. My
friends at Sedo say, “Chena, it’s your fault!”
However, many are new players that want to gather domains in
the “virgin” Hispanic market and benefit from its
constant growth. But what happens is that, being new at
this, they will probably not pay the prices I or other
active domainers in the market will pay, since we know the
business and know where to press the right buttons to
develop and monetize Hispanic traffic to the highest degree
possible.”

“I’m
not about to obtain all of the Spanish domains, I’m only
interested in those that match what I mentioned earlier. It
would hurt to see the rest of the Spanish domains just
parked on English PPC pages, or even worse, giving an error
page, so I am happy when the Hispanic domain market moves
and gets new .com sales, especially if the buyers are
Hispanic developers,” Chena said.

In
many countries, the local ccTLD extension is very popular,
even rivaling .com in places like Germany (.de) and the UK
(.co.uk). We wondered what Chena thought of the prospects for
his country’s extension - .py. “To tell you the truth I
only have the .com.py extensions for my own businesses,"
Chena said. The main reason is that Paraguayan traffic operates in a
strange way, and they are more used to typing the .com than the
ccTLD, probably more than most other countries. Even Paraguayan
companies register more .coms nowadays, and that’s one of the
reasons why my domain registration service, ProDominios.com, has
become so popular. The other is that the number of Paraguayan users
is still very scarce, something I intend to change with time,
investing in new services and promoting the use of the Internet in
my country."

Though
his web enterprises keep Chena occupied almost every waking hour, he
does have one weakness that occasionally pulls him away from the
computer. “Yes, I love movies!,” Chena declared. “I have a big
room with a home theater and a collection of thousands of original
DVDs, from movies to my favorite TV series (The Sopranos,
CSI, etc.), I’m always hunting for something new at Amazon.
Every time I get the chance I invite friends to my place and we have
a good session of movies and pizza.”

“Though
I try to watch at least one movie a day, sometimes I just can’t
detach myself from the PC. In fact, I work 7 days a week and barely
sleep. Most of the time, my best ideas come when I’m about to fall
asleep and I interrupt my sleeping to follow up on them! My schedule
is highly unstable. I believe this is the case for some other people
in this business too."

Still,
Chena wouldn’t want anyone to feel sorry about his workaholic
ways. “Work” is just an expression,” he said. “To me this is
a pleasure, almost fun! Thank God it is something I love that
(without having it as an objective) gives great results money-wise
and allows me to forget about that factor, so I can dedicate myself
to providing my users with what they are searching for, having fun
on the way and learning every day.”

While
Chena’s big buys often put his name in the spotlight, he is not used
to being the center of attention. “I am a very shy person and very
dedicated to my work so I don’t have a very active social life.
The best way for me to reach people is through my work and many of
the people I admire the most are people I haven’t personally met,
but they have my respect whether it be for what they are bringing to
our community of domainers or for the kind attention they have given
me; Ari Goldberger, Ron Jackson, Adam Dicker (DNForum),
Matty Purtell (DomainState),
Mike Davidson (seed investor of Paypal), Matías de Tezanos, Alberto Dominguez
and Greg Manriquez, just to name a few,” Chena said.

Though
his career is just beginning, Chena has crammed a lifetime
of learning into the past few years. Based on his
experience, he has some advice for those who might want to
follow in his path. “To all domainers that are starting, I
want to say that it might be hard at the beginning, but the
best shortcut is to learn more and participate on the
forums. Almost all domainers have a greatcharacteristic, they help each other and they have no
problem in giving advice to improve your business and to
make your first step the right one!”

Being
a person that others now look to for advice seems strange to
Chena. “Something that keeps amazing me is that many
consider me a “big player”. I feel like I am just
starting and that there is much to learn and
definitively much more still to do. The real big players for
me are the ones I mentioned in this interview!”

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